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Cylon Of Athens
Cylon (also Kylon; ) was an Athenian of the archaic period in Ancient Greece, primarily known for the events of the Cylonian Affair, an attempted seizure of power in the city. Cylon, one of the Athenian nobles and a previous victor of the Olympic Games in 640 BC, attempted a coup in either 636 BC or 632 BC with support from Megara, where his father-in-law, Theagenes, was tyrant. History in literature Scholarship has attempted to definitively date the events of Cylon's coup, but the only primary records of him come from Herodotus and Thucydides, both of whom only mention that he was a previous winner of the Olympic Games. According to Thucydides (1.126), the oracle at Delphi had advised Cylon to seize Athens during a festival of Zeus, which he understood to mean the Olympics, and become the tyrant of the city himself. Herodotus (5.71) mentions nothing about a festival of Zeus, and Thucydides (1.126) continues with the discussion of the festival called Diasia, leaving some sc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athens
Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southernmost capital on the European mainland. With its urban area's population numbering over 3.6 million, it is the List of urban areas in the European Union, eighth-largest urban area in the European Union (EU). The Municipality of Athens (also City of Athens), which constitutes a small administrative unit of the entire urban area, had a population of 643,452 (2021) within its official limits, and a land area of . Athens is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years, and its earliest human presence beginning somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BCE. According to Greek mythology the city was named after Athena, the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plutarch
Plutarch (; , ''Ploútarchos'', ; – 120s) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''Parallel Lives'', a series of biographies of illustrious Greeks and Romans, and ''Moralia'', a collection of essays and speeches. Upon becoming a Roman citizen, he was possibly named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (). Family Plutarch was born to a prominent family in the small town of Chaeronea, about east of Delphi, in the Greek region of Boeotia. His family was long established in the town; his father was named Autobulus and his grandfather was named Lamprias. His brothers, Timon and Lamprias, are frequently mentioned in his essays and dialogues, which speak of Timon in particular in the most affectionate terms. Studies and life Plutarch studied mathematics and philosophy in Athens under Ammonius of Athens, Ammonius from AD 66 to 67. He attended th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isagoras
Isagoras (), son of Tisander, was an Athenian aristocrat in the late 6th century BC. He had remained in Athens during the tyranny of Hippias, but after Hippias was overthrown, he became involved in a struggle for power with Cleisthenes, a fellow aristocrat. In 508 BC he was elected archon eponymous, but Cleisthenes opposed him, with support from the majority of the population. Isagoras requested support from the Spartan king Cleomenes I, an old friend who had earlier been given hospitality by Isagoras. According to Herodotus, Cleomenes had had an affair with Isagoras' wife.Herodotus, ''Histories'', 5.70 In 507 BCE, Isagoras, with Cleomenes' help, expelled Cleisthenes and other members of the Alcmaeonidae family on pretext of the Alcmaeonidaean stain (see Megacles). Cleisthenes' supporters and the ordinary Athenian citizens revolted against Isagoras' tyranny, and ended up trapping Isagoras and his Spartan allies on the Acropolis for two days. On the third day they made a truce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solon
Solon (; ; BC) was an Archaic Greece#Athens, archaic History of Athens, Athenian statesman, lawmaker, political philosopher, and poet. He is one of the Seven Sages of Greece and credited with laying the foundations for Athenian democracy.Stanton, G. R. ''Athenian Politics c. 800–500 BC: A Sourcebook'', Routledge, London (1990), p. 76.E. Harris, "A New Solution to the Riddle of the Seisachtheia", in ''The Development of the Polis in Archaic Greece'', eds. L. Mitchell and P. Rhodes (Routledge 1997) 103 Solon's efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral declineAristotle, ''Politics'', 1273b 35–1274a 21 resulted in his Solonian Constitution, constitutional reform overturning most of Draco (lawgiver), Draco's Draconian constitution, laws. Solon's reforms included debt relief later known and celebrated among Athenians as the (shaking off of burdens). He is described by Aristotle in the ''Constitution of the Athenians (Aristotle), Athenian Constitution'' as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phaistos
Phaistos (, ; Ancient Greek: , , Linear B: ''Pa-i-to''; Linear A: ''Pa-i-to''), also Transliteration, transliterated as Phaestos, Festos and Latin Phaestus, is a Bronze Age archaeological site at modern Faistos, a municipality in south central Crete. It is notable for the remains of a Minoan palace and the surrounding town. Ancient Phaistos was located about east of the Mediterranean Sea and south of Heraklion. Phaistos was one of the largest cities of Minoan Crete. The name Phaistos survives from Ancient Greece, ancient Greek references to a city on Crete of that name at or near the current ruins. History Bronze Age Phaistos was first inhabited around 3600 BCE, slightly later than other early sites such as Knossos. During the Early Minoan period, the site's hills were Terrace (building), terraced and monumental buildings were constructed on them. Like other large Minoan cities, there was a palace that was built in an area that had been used earlier for communal feastin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epimenides
Epimenides of Knossos (or Epimenides of Crete) (; ) was a semi-mythical 7th- or 6th-century BC Greek seer and philosopher-poet, from Knossos or Phaistos. Life While tending his father's sheep, Epimenides is said to have fallen asleep for fifty-seven years in a Cretan cave sacred to Zeus, after which he reportedly awoke with the gift of prophecy (Diogenes Laërtius i. 109–115). Plutarch writes that Epimenides purified Athens after the pollution brought by the Alcmeonidae, and that the seer's expertise in sacrifices and reform of funeral practices were of great help to Solon in his reform of the Athenian state. The only reward he would accept was a branch of the sacred olive, and a promise of perpetual friendship between Athens and Knossos (Plutarch, ''Life of Solon'', 12; Aristotle, '' Ath. Pol''. 1). Athenaeus also mentions him, in connection with the self-sacrifice of the ''erastes'' and ''eromenos'' pair of Aristodemus and Cratinus, who were believed to have given their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miasma (Greek Mythology)
In ancient Greek religion, a miasma was "a contagious power... that has an independent life of its own. Until purged by the sacrificial death of the wrongdoer, society would be chronically infected by catastrophe."Armstrongp. 64–65 An example is that of Atreus, who invited his brother Thyestes to dine on a delicious stew, which had been prepared with the butchered flesh of Thyestes’s own sons. As a result, a miasma contaminated the entire family of Atreus, where one violent crime led to another, providing fodder for many of the Greek heroic tales. Attempts to cleanse a city or a society from miasma may have the opposite effect of reinforcing it. See also * Miasma theory The miasma theory (also called the miasmic theory) is an abandoned medical theory that held that diseases—such as cholera, chlamydia, or plague—were caused by a ''miasma'' (, Ancient Greek for 'pollution'), a noxious form of "bad air", a ... * Panacea (medicine) Notes References * * Anc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alcmaeonidae
The Alcmaeonidae (; , ; Attic: , ) or Alcmaeonids () were a wealthy and powerful noble family of ancient Athens, a branch of the Neleides who claimed descent from the mythological Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ... Alcmaeon, the great-grandson of Nestor (mythology), Nestor. In the 7th to late 5th centuries BC, the Alcmaeonidae played a significant role in the developments and events that occurred in Athens. Such developments included overthrowing an Athenian tyrant, helping to lay the foundations of Athenian democracy, and having generals for Athens during the Peloponnesian War. The Alcmaeonidae were mentioned frequently throughout Herodotus' ''Histories (Herodotus), The Histories'', and many played a key role in shaping Athens. The first prominent Alcmaeonid was M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genos
In ancient Greece, a ''genos'' (Greek: γένος, "race, stock, kin", plural γένη ''genē'') was a social group claiming common descent, referred to by a single name (see also Sanskrit "Gana"). Most ''gene'' were composed of noble families—Herodotus uses the term to denote noble families—and much of early Greek politics seems to have involved struggles between ''gene''. ''Gene'' are best attested in Athens, where writers from Herodotus to Aristotle dealt with them. Early modern historians postulated that ''gene'' had been the basic organizational group of the Dorian and Ionian tribes that settled Greece during the Greek Dark Ages, but more recent scholarship has reached the conclusion that ''gene'' arose later as certain families staked a claim to noble lineage. In time, some, but not necessarily all, ''gene'' came to be associated with hereditary priestly functions.Lambert, Stephen, "A Polis and its Priests: Athenian Priesthoods before and after Pericles' Citizen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athenian Democracy
Athenian democracy developed around the 6th century BC in the Ancient Greece, Greek city-state (known as a polis) of Classical Athens, Athens, comprising the city of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, and focusing on supporting liberty, equality, and security. Although Athens is the most familiar of the democratic city-states in ancient Greece, it was not the only one, nor was it the first; multiple other city-states adopted similar democratic constitutions before Athens. By the late 4th century BC, as many as half of the over one thousand existing Greek cities might have been democracies. Athens practiced a political system of legislation and executive bills. Participation was open to adult, free male citizens (i.e., not a metic, woman or slave). Adult male citizens probably constituted no more than 30 percent of the total adult population. Solon (in 594 BC), Cleisthenes (in 508–07 BC), and Ephialtes (in 462 BC) contributed to the development of Athenian democrac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cleisthenes
Cleisthenes ( ; ), or Clisthenes (), was an ancient Athenian lawgiver credited with reforming the constitution of ancient Athens and setting it on a democratic footing in 508 BC. For these accomplishments, historians refer to him as "the father of Athenian democracy". He was a member of the aristocratic Alcmaeonid clan. He was the younger son of Megacles and Agariste making him the maternal grandson of the tyrant Cleisthenes of Sicyon. He was also credited with increasing the power of the Athenian citizens' assembly and for reducing the power of the nobility over Athenian politics. In 510 BC, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow the tyrant Hippias, son of Peisistratus. Cleomenes I, king of Sparta, put in place a pro-Spartan oligarchy headed by Isagoras. However, Cleisthenes, with the support of the middle class and aided by democrats, took over. Cleomenes intervened in 508 and 506 BC, but could not stop Cleisthenes and his Athenian supporters. Through Cleisthen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hippias (tyrant)
Hippias (; 490 BC) was the last tyrant of Athens, ruling from 527 to 510 BC. He was one of the Peisistratids, a group of tyrants from the same family in ancient Greece. His father was Pisistratus, who preceded him as ruler of Athens, while his brother Hipparchus (brother of Hippias), Hipparchus may have ruled jointly with him. Hippias also had an illegitimate son, Hegesistratus, whom he made tyrant of Sigeion. He was deposed when Cleomenes I of Sparta successfully invaded Athens and forced him to flee to the Achaemenid Empire. Early life Hippias was born around 570 BC as the eldest son of Pisistratus, the first tyrant of Athens. When his father was forced to flee to Eretria after insulting Megacles, Megakles by having intercourse with his daughter in an indecent way, Peisistratos held counsel with his sons. Hippias suggested that they should retake the tyranny, which his father agreed to. Preparations began for which Athens fell to Peisistratos for the third time in 54 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
